Chalk another one up for science

Thousands of people in the northern hemisphere have witnessed a spectacular light show of shooting stars, known as the Perseid meteor shower.

Meteor showers were once seen as heavenly portents, interpreted in one way or another by people who didn't know what the hell they were talking about. Thanks to science, we now know that the annual Perseid shower occurs when Earth passes through the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet, causing tiny particles of dust to burn up in our planet's atmosphere.

Keats moaned that Newton had destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by describing how it worked. Keats could not have been more wrong. Isn't the real explanation of the Perseid shower so much more poetic than any mumbo-jumbo about starry messages from non-existant deities? Knowing its true cause only added to my sense of wonder as I stood barefoot on my lawn last night, gawping at the light show emanating from just to the left of Cassiopeia.

On 14 May 1856, Charles Darwin recorded in his journal that, on the advice of his friend Charles Lyell, after almost 20 years exploring the subject, he had finally begun writing a ‘sketch’ of his ideas on species.

To mark Charles Darwin’s 211th birthday, some thoughts on his 1871 classic, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, an unlikely anecdote about a snail, plus all the usual book reviews and links to Darwin-related news stories.